(Dessous/Stomp)

Most people will have first heard the music of Berlin-based DJ and producer Phonique through the Tiefschwarz remix of his track The Red Dress.  The Tiefschwarz remix was a big hit on dance floors worldwide and also made it to number 1 on the German club charts. However, it doesn’t get a guernsey on Phonique’s debut album Identification, and this isn’t such a bad thing, as there are plenty of other great tunes on this 15-track album to indulge yourself in.

Since the mid-90s, Michael Vater aka Phonique has been one of the busiest Berlin-based  DJs and producers with his own club night Club Paris at Pfefferbank, and regular spots at Tresor, Sternradio, and polar.tv. He has also spent a fair wack of time in the studio doing several edits for the Berlin Jazzanova label and for Poker Flat label mates Steve Bug and Martin Landsky. It’s no surprise then that it’s taken him so long to release his first full-length long player, but what is surprising is the abundance of quality tunes on this release.

Phonique takes us on a journey through the myriad of styles of house music both old and new.  The journey begins with the beautiful and moody deep house of For The Time Being featuring the lush, soothing vocals of Royksopp’s Erlend Oye. More sweet, melodic house follows with Cafe Monte Carlo, which reminds of DJ Gregory’s Attend One.  Paris The Black Fu from Detroit Grand Pubahs is up next as the guest vocalist on Thick’n Rich, which is a quirky, bleepy, piano-led old-skool disco number with The Black Fu’s hip hop style vocals telling us how “I like my women thick’n rich, just chocolate, thick’n rich”.  Work Together is an excellent tech-house tune in the vein of some of the work Timewriter has produced, deep, melodic, and dubby tech house, well-suited to those 4am sets.  Another guest vocalist, Alexander East, features on one of the more hip shaking tunes of this album, 99 and A Half, again showing the diversity of Vater’s taste in tunes.

The diversity of sounds and moods found on Identification is quite refreshing and reveals Phonique’s intentions of making a proper album, rather than just a collection of singles slapped hastily together with the Christmas retail period in mind.  We get cool electro, robotic and acid sounds on tracks like X-Attack and Time of the Drones, whilst sweeter, happier tones are found on tracks like Lovebreak, On a Hot Summer Day and Dancing the Boogie.  Almost all the tracks are relatively down-tempo by today’s house music BPM standards but this doesn’t detract from their dance floor friendliness, although I can’t imagine you’d hear many of the tracks in a peak time set.

Like much emanating from Germany these days, most notably the city of Berlin, be it the harder sounds of techno and electro or the softer tones and beats of deep and tech house and the Jazzanova sound, Phonique’s Identification demonstrates that there really is no need to rely on the obvious and overused to create great electronic/dance music that makes an impact and gets the ass shaking.  Identification certainly won’t blow your mind, but it doesn’t really need to, as its intentions are somewhat less clouded by the $.